Sutton smokestacks to come down in a few years

Monday

Apr 22, 2013 at 12:01 AM

The twin smokestacks at the Sutton Plant site that have towered over Wilmington for decades are coming down.

By Gareth McGrathGareth.McGrath@StarNewsOnline.com

The twin smokestacks at the Sutton Plant site that have towered over the Wilmington area for decades are coming down.But not for a few years.The 550-foot, red-and-white-ringed smokestacks at the power station off U.S. 421 North will no longer be needed once the site's new $600 million natural gas-fired plant comes operational early next year, said Duke Energy spokeswoman Lisa Hoffmann.Duke Energy merged with Progress Energy, which formerly operated the plant, last year.Tall stacks are used by power companies to avoid causing air quality problems in areas around coal plants.A plant powered by natural gas doesn't require large chimneys to help dissipate particulates and other contaminants created from burning a "dirty" fuel source.But it's not like you can just knock them down willy-nilly.Hoffmann said the large chimneys first need to be cleaned, since the decades of burning coal has left the stacks full of contaminants. That means especially scrubbing the insides.A plan also needs to be developed to dispose of the material post-demolition.And then there's the demolition process itself."It's going to take some precise demolition planning to bring them down safely," Hoffmann said.She added that the take-down of the towers will likely be one of the last actions crews take in the removal of the old coal plant from the sprawling site along the banks of the Cape Fear River. The old plant won't be shut down until the new plant is up and running, in order to prevent a loss of power generation for the region.The construction of the new natural gas plant, which started in 2011, is part of a larger project to retire a half-dozen of the utility's old coal-fired plants.But the old coal-fired units are not being replaced one-for-one, because the new natural gas plants will produce more power.For example, the new Sutton plant will produce 625 megawatts versus 575 for the coal-fired plant.